Mexico launches $7.4bn Mayan Train railway project

12/17/2018
Graphic News

December 17, 2018 -- Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has launched the Mayan Train – a $7.4 billion project to build a railway across five states to connect the main tourist attractions in the Yucatán peninsula.

The 1,525km railway will link Palenque and the tourist resort of Cancún on the Caribbean coast. A third of the planned route passes through pristine jungle, and the owners of the land, the Maya people, say they have not been consulted, according to a BBC News report.

But President López Obrador dismissed environmentalists’ concerns, promising that “we won’t uproot a single tree”.